Summary

Delver decks in Legacy have proven themselves as tier 1 options since the release of Innistrad. The power of a 3/2 flyer for just 1 mana backed up by the format’s most powerful and cheap spells makes for a cohesive and impressive strategy. What differentiates variants from each other is what other colors they choose to pair with blue. The deck we’re featuring today is Sultai Delver, which adds the powerful creatures of green and the discard and kill spell strength of black.

Delver of Secrets, as previously mentioned, is the focal point of this deck. In recent times, it’s paired up nicely with Deathrite Shaman as a way of increasing the amount of proactive turn 1 plays this deck has access to. The Return to Ravnica creature can give this deck a mana advantage in the early turns, while threatening a repeatable damage or life gain source later on. Tarmogoyf is the main add that green brings to this deck. It’s a very sizable beater that can sure up the ground on defense or get aggressive when tempo is in this deck’s favor.

Liliana of the Veil, while in the grand scheme of things expensive for this deck, has a crucial role to play. It constricts the opponent’s hand and gets opposition creatures out of the way, keeping the tempo game plan moving or letting this deck play very well into the mid and late game. To supplement the discard, this deck plays Hymn to Tourach. The 2 mana discard spell strips two cards from the opponent’s hand, including lands. This sort of effect usually has a lasting impact on the game, and it can even win games on its own when cast.

The rest of this deck focuses on the two important effects that tempo decks love to have: counter spells and removal spells. For counter spells, this deck plays the usual suspects in Force of Will and Daze, while Fatal Push and Abrupt Decay are used as the removal spells. The presence of Daze is the big differentiator between this deck and a more midrange-oriented Shardless Sultai decks from days past. It allows this deck to play to the board more and be significantly more mana efficient than the opponent, which spell success for tempo decks in general.